2023: NGO Kick Start e-platform, Deploy IT observers to Monitor the Polls

Folalumi Alaran

Few hours to the General Election, a non-governmental organization (NGO), ElectHER, kick started an online platform called ‘ElecteHER election hub’ and also deploys more than 100 IT infrastructure observers to monitor the presidential and gubernatorial elections across the country.

Briefing newsmen on Friday in Abuja, The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ElectHER, Ibijoke Faborode said the procedure is necessary to give Nigerians access to real-time information, and to make sure that the voices of women and young people are amplified.

Ibijoke clarified that the initiative is a joint effort of several civil society organizations and that it aims to gather data, enlighten the public, and provide citizens the authority to report on various systemic issues.

She said, “ We need the people to be really integrated, so this is a very human centric, people centric, citizen centric data center.

“ And one of the things that inspired this is just because the youth population 18 to 34 is such a high proportion of the voter population, but the question is, what are they listening to? How are they listening? Why are they listening? What do they want to hear? And so we have a live podcast production here today.

“ Hernalytics is the name of the tech platform we’re deploying. It has three key features where we’re going to be grabbing data from one is the VEOP platform, that is the verified election observer platform for accredited observers to impugn information from the field.

“ The other is eBody, eBody, essentially, is giving citizens the power to interact with politics so they can update, they can update on elections, you know, situations and conversations. They can share incident reports in cases of extreme violence and then they can also act as observers.

“ We’ve deployed about 100 observers, you know, for the presidential and gubernatorial elections and they are essentially going to be observing the elections in the constituencies of our candidates.

Speaking about election violence, she stated that the group had conducted extensive research, based on data, and had examined the characteristics and vulnerabilities as well as the opportunity cost of electoral security in the nation.

Ibijoke continues, “ And so we have some datas, we invite different stakeholders to share our findings with them. We are also going to be monitoring the different situations, so if anything arises, we will send it to the police, DSS or INEC.

“ I mean, you have an entire up here at Transcorp where you have different partners that have settled, people that are working on disinformation, facts tracking electoral violence.

“ So the good thing is that we’re focusing on getting that data, informing citizens and also ensuring that we give the citizens the power to report on different aspects of the system and wherever we feel like we need to escalate, we can then get in touch with any partners to do that.

“ So it’s a multi stakeholder approach that essentially but on the issue of security, we are not a security agency. We are a civil society organization. So what we need to do is to escalate the issue, however, we cannot respond to issues because that is not our obligation as a CSO.” She said.